Kramer vs. Kramer

by Avery Corman

  On Sunday, he returned to Fort Lauderdale. He got out of a cab outside the complex and walked toward the pool. Sandy saw him first and waved. Billy emerged from behind a beach chair and came running. He ran full speed in his choppy, unformed gait, yelling, “Daddy! Daddy!” on the long walkway from the pool, and then he jumped into his father’s arms. As the boy chattered away about shaking hands with Mickey Mouse, and Ted carried him back toward the others, he knew that for all his need to get away, to be alone, to get him out of his arms—above all else, he had missed him very much.

  FOURTEEN

  HE WAS IN A CLASS of thirty-two children, no longer the only Billy in his immediate universe, which Billy R. would have to learn, as well as the two Samanthas. Ted walked with the boy to school on the first day, the entrance to the building crowded with children hugging, jumping, hitting. Parents were outsiders with their “Now, now, that’s enough,”s which were largely ignored. Billy was cautious, and Ted led him up the steps of the building to Kindergarten in Room 101—he seemed to remember a Room 101 in his life somewhere. Ted stayed a few minutes and then left—“Mrs. Willewska will pick you up. See you later, big boy.” Billy was in the system. Regardless of Ted’s feelings about separation and the passing of time, he had a sense of accomplishment—he got Billy here. He looked just like the other children. You couldn’t tell a difference.

  Thelma gave Ted low grades on his fall social life. “You’re withdrawing. You’re not going out again.”

  “I have six phone numbers, a girl I can see if I’m ever in Atlanta-Miami, and I have my eye on one of the mothers from Billy’s class, who looks like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday and doesn’t wear a wedding ring.”

  “So long as you stay in circulation. It’s good for—”

  “What, Thelma?”

  “I don’t know. My mother always used to say it. I guess it’s good for the circulation.”

  He approached Samantha G’s mother one morning and asked if she would have time for a cup of coffee. They went to a nearby coffee shop where they began by talking about children and then she informed him she was divorced, but she was seeing someone, maybe their housekeepers could get the children together. So his Audrey Hepburn had made a coffee date to get a cookie date for her daughter. He understood. The children needed their social lives, too.

  He joined the parents’ association at school to be a concerned parent and signed up for the communications committee, which meant he asked his company’s art department to run off a handbill for Open School Week. At a class meeting, Ted Kramer sat on a tiny chair under an oak-tag rendering of “Our friends, the seasons.” Billy’s teacher was a Mrs. Pierce, a young woman in a dress from India. She touched off fantasies in Ted relating to his own Mrs. Garrett on up to Mrs. Bienstock, and he wanted to take Mrs. Pierce and feel her up in the clothing closet to the smell of steam from the radiator and wet galoshes.

  RUMORS BEGAN TO CIRCULATE through Ted’s company. The directors were said to be dissatisfied with profits in the American magazine industry. The chairman was said to have told someone they might discontinue publication within the month. Ted was furious. He could be out of a job again. It was deeply upsetting to him how little influence he had over such a central concern as his own livelihood. He had been working hard and successfully and now he could be on the street in that desperate situation all over again.

  Jim O’Connor placed a call to the board chairman in Caracas. The following morning a cable arrived for use internally and outside the company stating that there were no plans whatsoever to discontinue publication. However, advertisers became aware of the rumors and were cautious. Several canceled their schedules. Assured by management of a resolve to continue, Ted and O’Connor attempted to restore advertisers’ confidence. By sheer will, Ted was going to save the company and his job. While O’Connor was calling on his contacts, Ted began making as many sales calls as possible, he wrote copy for a new sales presentation, he pushed a market research study to be completed, he wrote a sales presentation from the survey, he even conceived of a men’s fashion show outdoors on Madison Avenue to demonstrate that they were still in business. For three weeks, he worked days and nights and gradually, some of the negative talk was overcome and new orders began to come in. Ted had helped to avert a crisis. The company was still functioning and he would have a job for a while. What he did not have was a clear way out of money-survival problems. He could still conceivably be out of work again and he had built his bank balance up to only $1200. In an article in The New York Times it was estimated that it now cost $85,000 to bring up one child in New York City through the age of eighteen. And they did not even count in the cost of a housekeeper.

  HIS FRIEND, LARRY, MEANWHILE, was prospering. He and Ellen bought a house on Fire Island. “How do you get to that, Larry?”

  “Well, a hot streak at the office. And we got two incomes, don’t forget.”

  Two incomes, the magic number. He had begun to see someone with her own income, a designer at an art studio. Vivian Fraser was an attractive woman of thirty-one, poised, sophisticated, maybe $20,000 a year, he figured. She probably would have been dismayed to know that for all the care she took with her appearance, at least one man thought that what she looked like was—solvent.

  He also entered her without her knowledge in the What Kind of Mommy Might She Be Sweepstakes. It was intriguing to him to think an outside force could bring both emotional stability and fiscal responsibility into the house. But anyone he brought into the house would eventually arrive in his bedroom, and anything from juice to a bad dream could bring the house detective into the room with his people, and Ted could never be certain his people could get along with Billy’s people and he did not even know how to avoid these considerations.

  After Billy and Vivian had met briefly one evening, Ted asked Billy, “Did you like Vivian?” realizing this was meaningless, since what he really wanted to hear was “Oh, yes, a fine woman. I feel I can relate to her on a one-to-one basis, and as you know, a commercial artist can always augment our income, in addition to her emotional presence.”

  “Uh-huh,” the boy said.

  LARRY AND ELLEN INVITED Ted and Billy to come out to Fire Island to see the new house and spend a weekend. Another couple was also invited with their ten-year-old daughter. The children played on the beach, the grownups drank champagne. Ted was relaxed, except for wishfulness. He would have loved such a luxury, a beach house—and the car for the getaway weekends, and the warm-weather vacations in the winter, and the other luxuries they would never have … $85,000 to age eighteen—with no one other than himself paying child support. If a Good Fairy out of one of Billy’s nursery tales appeared on the deck of the beach house in a hooded sweat shirt and said, “What may I grant thee?” he would have said, “To get six months ahead.”

  THE WEATHER TURNED RAW in the city. Weekend outdoor activity was going to be limited, and city parents would be relying on their inner resources and museums. Ted took it upon himself to entertain three of Billy’s friends at home on a Saturday—Kim and two of Billy’s classmates—for lunch and an afternoon of play. The child would have buddies and, in turn, their parents would reciprocate. He was the referee for occasional disputes, but for the most part stayed in the bedroom reading, guarding against his temptation to check to see if Billy was standing up to the others. They all seemed to be content. Left on their own, they organized themselves into dress-up games, hide-and-seek, and they took turns in the adventures of The Children Eater. He heard the sound of chewing—friendly chewing, he presumed. For several hours, he had a play group in his apartment. When the mothers appeared to claim their $85,000-through-age-eighteen parcels he delivered them intact, pleased with his administration of the day.

  “Presenting the fantastic Super Jet”—Billy announced from his room—“with the secret of its fantastic speed!”

  Earlier, Ted had heard the children discussing the construction of an airplane of Billy’s, and they had apparently taken the metal t
oy apart as a scientific experiment.

  “Here it comes!” Billy burst out of the room flying his plane, making a whirring sound, holding the disassembled toy in his hand. When he reached the door, he tripped on the doorstep and fell forward. Ted was standing in the hall a few feet away and saw him coming straight at him, as if in a sequence he could not stop—the body hurtling forward, the fall, the impact, the elbow hitting the floor and then driven upward, the metal piece in his hand, the scream—“Daddy!” the metal like a razor. It ripped into the boy’s skin at the cheekbone, slashing upward from the outside of his cheek to his hairline, blood leaking into the boy’s eyes and across his face. For an instant, Ted was frozen. He saw it, but he could not have seen it. “Daddy, I’m bleeding!” he cried, and Ted was already over him, cradling him, carrying him, grabbing towels, “It’s all right, baby. It’s all right, baby,” fighting off the feeling he was going to faint, rocking him—ice, he needed ice, it helps a wound—patting his head, kissing him, dabbing the blood with ice and the towels, his shirt covered with blood, Don’t faint—I think I’m going to faint—checking him over, trying to see the damage through the blood. “It’s stopping, Billy. You’re going to be all right.” And he rushed out into the street and hailed a cab to the hospital, patting the sobbing child, cradled in his arms.

  At the emergency ward they were behind a broken arm of a teenager and an old woman who had fallen, but Billy was actually next, the attendant informed Ted, “because he needs the surgeon.” Surgeon? It stopped bleeding so quickly, he thought it might not be so bad, after all. He had taken Billy to the hospital where his pediatrician maintained an office, and he asked the attendant to call up to see if the doctor was in the building. Billy had stopped crying and he watched every movement of the people around him on guard for whatever terrible thing might happen next.

  Ten stitches were required to close the wound, a line from the topmost part of his cheek, running nearly parallel to his sideburn. The surgeon applied a head bandage and said to Billy, “Don’t go knocking your head against any walls, little fella. And don’t take any showers, okay?” “Okay,” he said in a frightened, quiet voice. By chance, the pediatrician had been in his office and he came down. He gave Billy a lolly for being brave and then Ted had Billy wait outside the room for a few moments.

  “You’re lucky. Our best man was on,” the pediatrician said.

  “Will it leave a bad scar, do you think?” Ted asked in a whisper.

  “Any time the skin is broken, you can have scarring,” the surgeon said.

  “I see.”

  “I did my best—but, yes, there will be a scar.”

  “Think of it this way, Mr. Kramer,” the pediatrician said. “He’s a very fortunate boy. One inch and he could have lost an eye.”

  Billy picked at his hamburger that night. Ted had a double scotch on the rocks for dinner. They went through the normal rituals of the night, time to brush teeth, time for a story, both trying to create a normalcy to neutralize the event. Ted put him to sleep early and the child did not protest, exhausted by the tension.

  I was so near. If only I could have caught him.

  Ted went through the house wiping up blood stains. He took Billy’s clothes, which he had tossed to the side along with his shirt and the towels and stuffed them down the incinerator. He could not stand looking at them. At 11 P.M. while trying to watch the news, seeing it happen all over again, Ted got up and vomited scotch and bile into the toilet bowl.

  He could not come close to sleeping. In the next room, Billy was having tortured dreams, whimpering in his sleep. Ted came and sat on the floor beside the bed.

  Scarred for life. Scarred for life. He was repeating it to himself as though the words “for life” had some additional meaning. He began to replay the fall, if only he had come into the room earlier, seen the toy, anticipated what Billy was going to do, been nearer, caught him, not planned a day like this, he got too tired, he might not have tripped …

  He sat there, holding a vigil, thinking back. How did he get here—with this child who was so connected to him? In the beginning, when Joanna was first pregnant, the baby did not seem to have a connection to him, and now, the child was linked to his nervous system. Ted could feel the pain of the injury so acutely that his body could very nearly not absorb the pain. Was there a turning point, a moment when his life might have been different? If he had stayed with one of the others? Who were the others? Who would he have been? Who would his child have been? Would there have been more than one child? No children? What if he had not gone to that one beach house party that night? If he had not said exactly what he said to the man with Joanna? If he had not called her, who would he be with now? Would his life have been different? Better? Was there a smoking gun? Would he have been happier if none of it had happened the way it did? Then Billy would not exist. Would he have been better off if Billy did not exist? The boy whimpered in his sleep and he wanted to gather him up in his arms and make him sleep more peacefully, which was not within his power.

  There was no one moment when it might have been different or better, he decided. It is not that simple. And there are accidents. Billy, Billy, I would have caught you if I could.

  AFTER KEEPING HIM OUT of school for a few days, Ted released Billy, who wore his white bandage like a symbol of bravery. “You had ten stitches?” Kim said in awe. “A tight healing,” the surgeon pronounced­. The boy was left with an indentation of the skin, four inches long on the right side of his face, not marring the child’s appearance, but a scar nonetheless. Ted’s healing went more slowly. He would think about the fall. It would flicker across his consciousness at odd times and he would shudder, a knife-like pain in his bowels. As a catharsis he told some of the people he knew about the accident, reinforcing the positive: “It was tremendously lucky. He could have lost an eye.” He would get to telling the grandparents later.

  TED WAS AT THE zoo with Charlie, the children going around on a pony cart ride. “It’s like with teeth,” Charlie said. “A person chips a tooth and thinks the whole world is looking at that chipped tooth. Or he has a silver crown in the back of his mouth and he thinks everybody can see it.”

  “Wouldn’t you have noticed the scar? Really, Charlie?”

  “Maybe not. Maybe only if you told me.”

  “I see it. Sometimes I see it when my eyes are closed.”

  “DADDY, A KID IN school told me his brother told him that a hockey player got twenty stitches.”

  “Hockey can be a rough game. They get hurt sometimes.”

  “Could I have a hockey stick?”

  “I don’t know. They’re for older kids.”

  “I won’t play on ice. Just by the house.”

  “Boom-Boom Kramer over here.”

  “What do you mean, Daddy?”

  “Boom-Boom Geoffrion—he was a hockey player. When you’re a little older I guess you can have a hockey stick if you still want one.”

  “How old do you have to be when you don’t sleep with your teddy and your people any more?”

  “No special age. Whenever you want.”

  “I think I’m old enough. I think I’d like to try not to sleep with them.”

  “If that’s what you want—”

  “Well, they can still stay in my room. Sort of like statues. And I can still play with them during the day. But they can be on my bookcase and watch me when I’m sleeping.”

  “When do you want to do that?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  The night his son gave up his teddy, the father was feeling the sentiment more than the child. Billy was very proud of himself the next morning, having slept through the night without a baby’s security. He was passing through crises. He went about his days at full speed, without caution. When he raced through the house or in the playground, Ted was apprehensive. “Careful, Billy, not so fast.” “Not so fast” held no meaning. Billy had forgotten the fall, the stitches. He was five and growing.

 
But the injury lingered for Ted. He would never forget the moment. The piece of metal like a razor cutting open the boy’s face. The blood. And the end of self-delusion—that his child was perfect, that his beautiful face was to bear no scars, that the child was to bear no scars. His son whom he loved so deeply was imperfect, perishable. He could be hurt again. He could die. Ted Kramer had envisioned a safe, controlled world for his son. The wound was testimony. He could not exercise such control.

  FIFTEEN

  TED KRAMER RETURNED TO the office after meeting with a client and was given his telephone messages. Joanna Kramer had called. She asked that he call back and left a local number. His work day was effectively terminated at that moment.

  “This is Ted.”

  “Oh, hello, Ted. How are you?” she said warmly. “This is a new job, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it’s a new job. How did you get the number?”

  “From your housekeeper.”

  “You called the house?”

  “I didn’t upset Billy, if you’re worried. I called when he was at school.”